Saturday, 28 February 2015

The more
scanned drawings I added to the text the more it reminded me of old kitsch
wallpaper (the sort with views of Tuscany interspersed with peppers and Chianti
bottles). Time for Plan C

The object
of the exercise was to experiment with the printer so I decided to see how I
could use it to add text to pre-prepared papers. I made
several different coloured surfaces using watercolour and water-soluble crayons
on cartridge paper, and when dry I ironed them flat.

Some work
better than others, the salt is too busy

but the cling film is really effective
as a background.

I also
revived the artwork from an old idea for a book. ‘Twelve Dancing Princesses’ is meant
to have the feel of traditional fairy story imagery, princesses and delicate
colours, but if you look at the text that makes up the pattern on their dresses it
picks out the qualities that seem to apply to the ‘heroines‘ of many fairy
stories (eldest, youngest-the middle child never seems to do anything
remarkable, kind, meek, dutiful-nothing wrong with them as qualities on their
own but put together its a depressing role model for girls)

I printed
some in black only to hand colour later....

and some in
blue and pink as well.

The Barbie colours fit the subject matter. The colour is
miss registered which I quite like. It fits the disparity between the feel of
the artwork and its commentary.

The printer
uses soy ink which will take a while to dry completely before I can start to
cut and assemble the books.

Friday, 20 February 2015

I had
thought of making the images in a similar way to ‘Rapunzel’ but it just wasn’t
working so I’m working on Plan B

A few years
ago I did some work photocopying charcoal drawings onto acetate and then placing
them over simple flat underpaintings. Slightly misregistering the layers made
the images more interesting. I’m going to try something similar with the
risograph, taking advantage of the difficulty of registering colours exactly.

First the
charcoal drawing.....

Then using
photoshop to add colour and layers...

And putting
these under the text grid.

The image
manipulation isn’t quite there yet but I’m confident enough (famous last words)
to carry on making all the drawings.

Thursday, 12 February 2015

I decided over
the weekend that it would be a good idea to edition a book. A small one,
because I want to print the pages for each one on a single sheet of A3. I’m going to
use the riso printer and ideally I’ll use just two colours

I’ve chosen
to use ‘The Laboratory’ by Robert Browning. I’ve liked his macabre storytelling
ever since we studied ‘My Last Duchess’ at
school.

This has meant I’ve spent large parts of the week on the computer trying to
arrange the words into a grid for the pages. Trying to isolate the speaker's inner, more manic,
monologue from the lighter conversational tone that she uses when talking to
the alchemist has made this more complicated but I think I’ve done it.

I’ve also
worked out how I’m going to bind it before I start to print which is unusual
for me.

Friday, 6 February 2015

My wonderful
kids bought me membership of the Hot Bed Press for Christmas so yesterday I
took my colour separations to play with the risograph.

It took a
while to remember how to use it (I couldn’t find my notes from last September’s
workshop) but eventually I managed a rack of prints.

Just black
....

2 colour
separation in different colour ways (I had anticipated using yellow and black
to echo the belisha beacon on the zebra crossing but there wasn’t any yellow
ink)....

And three colour
separation.

There are restrictions with the process. Registration
isn’t completely accurate (though you can fiddle with placing the overlapping
colours a bit) and colours are limited (I'm going to have to avoid the temptation to overuse this glorious pink) but I'm thoroughly enjoying using it. I want to try
two sided printing next.